


take my wrongs and make them right

by andthatscarf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Healing, Nightmares, Past Character Death, Post Nogitsune, all that good good, hopeful ending tho! cause what is angst without an ambiguous happy ending, like a lot. a lot of angst, mental health, so you know, void!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:41:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22681147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthatscarf/pseuds/andthatscarf
Summary: you’re sixteen when your life gets turned upside down. only, it's never really been the right way up, anyway, and how much worse can the world get when you spent the years you were supposed to be out playing and being a kid watching your mom die? what do fangs and claws and full moons have onthat?(a lot, it turns out.)
Relationships: Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski & The Pack
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	take my wrongs and make them right

**Author's Note:**

> this was the start of another fic i’m writing, and i really wasn’t going to post it because it was just supposed to be a starting point, but here we are !
> 
> :)

you’re sixteen when your life gets turned upside down. only, it's never really been the right way up, anyway, and how much worse can the world get when you spent the years you were supposed to be out playing and being a kid watching your mom die and then making sure your dad doesn’t drink himself to death? what do fangs and claws and full moons have on _that?_

_(a lot, turns out. fangs and claws and full moons are synonyms for death and bones breaking and friends dying and the supposed love of your life bleeding out on the lacrosse field and families burning to death in their own home. nothing will ever feel the same as losing your mom but it turns out things are worse. the world is terrifying and you aren’t invincible anymore, and there are so many things more awful than watching the person you love most of everyone slowly being killed by her own body that you don’t have enough fingers to count them, don’t even know enough numbers)_

you’re seventeen and you’re holding someone up in a pool for hours or running for your life or making plans to kill people and you don’t know how life got this way. you can’t understand how things got so irreversibly fucked up and there isn’t anyone to talk to and everything is so dark, now. you stop paying attention in math class because what is algebra compared to guns and blood and the way their skin knits itself back together, the way that yours doesn’t. and you’re so tender, so fragile, and your bat is nothing but it’s all you have and you’re so desperate for a family that you keep throwing yourself against them, keep fighting them every time they try to keep you safe, because you need them, you _need them_ , and you need them to need you too. 

_(if you’re not useful, you’re not easy to love. you don’t know where or when you learned this, only that you know it’s true like you know death is something that can only be outrun so many times, and you repeat it like a mantra, like a triskelion, alpha-beta-omega alpha-beta-omega, until you know the shape of the words so well you could mark them in a spiral and declare them to the world, declare them yours)_

you’re seventeen and the world keeps starting and stopping and starting again, and nothing is real, it can’t be, not with this much death and pain and suffering and someone’s building bombs and you can’t stop thinking about ice freezing your veins and _you’ve opened the door_ and words all spilled out the wrong way and _isthisrealisthisrealhowmanyfingersdoihave_ and waking up curled on the nemeton and writing scratched into the chalkboard and life slipping through your fingers and the lines on your best friend’s mom’s face and hospital beds and _one, two, three_ hours sleep and—

_(everyone has it no one can lose it, everyone has it no one can lose it, who am i? whoamiwhoamiwhoami ticktockticktock time’s running out)_

— _i told you the risks, stiles, you chose to open the door_ and your dad flinching at the word _terminal_ and bandages and basements and your leg trapped, bleeding out, and you’re so scared, so scared, terrified all the time and _one, two, three_ hours sleep and barefeet in the preserve and shaking, shaking, shaking and black figures and _you can’t kill me_ and fireflies and death, so much death. and your hands aren’t your own but have they ever really been? and your mind isn’t your own but has it ever really been? and your body isn’t your own but has it ever really been? 

_(your hands, not your hands, your hands twisting a blade in your best friend’s stomach and your hands, not your hands, throwing your alpha, not your alpha, notnotnot your alpha, not your pack, nonononono never again,_ never, _and the supposed love of your life screaming and your best friend’s first love ohgodohgodwhathaveidoneohgodohgod—)_

you’re seventeen and you’re everything that’s worse than watching your mom die three weeks after your tenth birthday. you’re seventeen but you’ve caused so much pain and so much death and spilled so much blood you’ve run through your quota for the next thirty-three lives. you’re seventeen and the world is so dark and it’s all your fault, all of it, and _you’re not loveable if you’re not useful_ is still ringing in your ears like it’s the one to blame, like if you’d just tried harder none of this would have ever happened, like the universe turned you into something utterly despicable, repulsive, something so abhorrent because you were never going to be worthy enough of love, anyway

_(handfuls of deputies dead and your dad can’t look you in the eye anymore and your bestfriend can’t look you in the eye anymore and your alpha notyouralphanononono can’t look you in the eye anymore and one, two, three hours of sleep and you can’t even count your fingers anymore, you don’t deserve it, you don’t get to know if anything is real when you’ve hurt so many people and it’s no wonder they can’t bear to look at you anymore, you can’t even stomach the thought of looking at yourself)_

you’re seventeen and your face is yours but it isn’t and your hands are yours but they aren’t and your body is yours but it isn’t, and maybe they never were, but they definitely won’t ever be again. they’ll never be yours, never, because they belong to every single person you killed, all the blood you spilled, the pain you caused. you don’t own anything but your guilt. your brain is empty again and you keep telling yourself you have it back but do you? _do you?_ what if it’s just waiting? what if _it_ is just laying quiet, dormant, waiting to strike? to kill everyone it didn’t get the chance to last time? 

_(everyonehasitnoonecanloseit, no one can lose it. no one can lose it. no one can lose it)_

you’re seventeen and your friends don’t want you, your family doesn’t want you. _you’re too hard to love_. and you see them watching you like maybe they want to say something but you don’t let them, you run before they get the chance. you don’t trust this body that isn’t yours in case the hands that aren’t yours try to kill them again and you don’t deserve them, you _don’t_. you killed your mother and you killed your friends and your father is so stressed from working for half the station that you’re killing him, too. everything you touch ends up wounded, bleeding out. your hands are weapons and you are death, you’re _death_

 _(you can’t sit in school at all anymore, can’t make yourself care, because if algebra seemed pointless compared to werewolves, then what the_ fuck _does anything matter now? how can anything matter ever again?)_

you’re seventeen and you don’t graduate and you don’t see your friends in caps and gowns and you don’t get to celebrate after and you hide in your room so you don’t have to see the way your father’s face falls every time he looks at you. you curl up in bed and stare at the wall until the sun goes down and your legs go numb and you can’t tell if you’re awake or not and you breaths are shallow and your chest aches but this body isn’t yours, anyway. this life doesn’t belong to you so what does it matter if it’s not even happening? you’re seventeen and even though you’ve known it for months, your blood thrums and this mind that may or may not belong solely to you won’t stop screaming, _your life is not your own!_

_(deep down you still know that you belong to the nogitsune, even if it’s gone. your life is not your own. you think you should be scared but you just feel nothing)_

you’re seventeen for another four hours and you’re sat on the floor of your childhood bedroom alone. the moon is up and your dad is at work and you haven’t bothered turning the lights on. you’re seventeen until midnight but the injustice of it is that ever since the nogitsune, you’ve felt archaic, older than age, older than life, and you have to keep reminding yourself that you’ve only really had a tiny fraction of time in this life. you’re seventeen but you don’t think you’ve been anything for so long that it’s hard to find the importance in it. you’re seventeen, but you’re not, because corpses don’t have ages, and you’ve been dead a long, long time

_(you died with your mother and then with your father drowning in a bottle and you died with erica and boyd and you died with peter and you died when scott turned that first night and you died with allison and heather and aiden and the deputies and all those innocent people. you’ve died in the preserve too many times to count. you died with the hales in the fire and you died with paige and you died with the mechanic and the kanima and you died a little bit when you found out gerard was alive, too. you died when jackson left, and ethan, and cora, and derek. you’ve spent so much time dying it's a wonder there’s anything left to kill at all)_

you’re—you’re eighteen, and you’re sitting on the carpet of your childhood bedroom, and you feel like this should be a pivotal moment but you can’t tell the minutes apart. you’re eighteen and allison is dead. you’re eighteen and you’ve killed more people than years you’ve lived. you’re _eighteen_ and it’s sometime after midnight, and your bedroom window slides open. there’s the soft thud of sneakers hitting the floor underneath it and you roll your head to the side expecting to see dark hair and thick eyebrows or the pack— _notpacknotpacknotyoursneveragain_ —and their claws and finally, finally they’ve come to kill you, but you turn your head and through the dim that’s not what you see. you’re eighteen, and so is he, and you’re—

_(so grateful that he’s here, so relieved, you can’t believe it and it can’t be real, it can’t, and you know he’s here to shout at you, to threaten you, to tell you everything he should have said after he watched allison die, you know all of these things, but he’s here, he’s here and finally you’re not alone, you’re not, and whatever comes next will be painful but nothing can be as painful as the way you’ve been living, the way you’ve been dying, nothing at all)_

you’re eighteen and you're watching your best friend who isn’t your best friend crouching in your bedroom, head crooked to the side. you can’t see what he’s wearing or his expression because everything’s too dark but his eyes glow red and you want to bare your neck to him and you want to crash into him like old times and you want to say _i’msorryi’msorryi’msorryscottplease please_ until he forgives you but instead you stay so still you’re not even breathing, like prey playing dead. you stay like that for a while, the two of you, and every second you expect him to leave, to decide otherwise, but he stays and he stays and he stays, not moving, not doing anything, just looking. 

_(you wonder if he’s trying to decide what to do with you. you wonder if the pack knows he’s here. you wonder what you smell like and what you look like and whether he thinks you deserve it. you wonder if he can tell you’re rotting on the inside, everything ash and blood and dust, and you want to ask, you do, but you’re too afraid of the knowing. you’re not loveable if you’re not useful, and what is death but uselessness? what is grief? guilt? sadness?)_

you’re eighteen and your best friend who isn’t your best friend anymore pulls something from his pocket and leaves it on the carpet by his feet before disappearing back the way he came, leaving the window open. you can’t make yourself move and you can’t breathe and everything is so _loud_ even though there’s no sound at all and you’re all alone again and you’re not even sure that anything even happened, that this is real, that you won’t wake up tomorrow pressed against the nemeton like its home, but when your _(not your)_ lungs remember how to be lungs and your _(not your)_ heart remembers how to be a heart and your _(not your)_ body remembers how to be a body you crawl to the small box underneath your window like a dying man searching for water in the desert, a drowning man clawing for air in the ocean

_(you’re both of those things and you always have been)_

you’re eighteen and you’ve just seen your best friend who isn’t your best friend for the first time in days, weeks, months, maybe. you open the box and inside lies a pendant on a chain: a silver wolf howling at the moon. the moon is made from mother-of-pearl, and you know what that means, know that your—your best friend, maybe, knows too. you remember spinning in your desk chair and reading off the list, remember your best friend repeating every word mockingly, disbelievingly; _emotional balance, protection, healing stress, how can people believe a piece of oyster shell can do all that?_ you’re sixteen again, and you remember that the world was good, and that when you’d asked the big scary not-alpha with the massive eyebrows, he’d said _silver kills bacteria, not werewolves, idiot_ and you remember laughing and laughing and laughing until your ribs hurt

_(you haven’t laughed like that in so long, you’re not sure you remember how, that if you tried, your body might just stop, shut down, because it wouldn’t know how to handle it. you think that maybe you’re too broken to heal, like a record with a crack right through it, like a boy whose hands have been used to kill, and that maybe trying will just make it worse. it’s harder to miss something when you pretend you don’t want it back)_

you’re sixteen, or seventeen, or eighteen, it doesn’t matter, anymore, because it all still feels the same, and you fall asleep with the pendant clutched between your fingers. you’re too scared to put it on, too scared of what it will mean. too scared that putting something that might as well be labelled _healing_ around your neck is tempting fate. you’re scared that you want it too much, and don’t the things you want always get destroyed? you never wanted to hurt anyone, and where did that get you? you never wanted your mom to die, and you never wanted your dad to look so tired all the time, so defeated, and you just—you just wanted to be happy. 

_(you want to be happy._ want. _present tense. you want to not be so scared of. of, everything. you want your pack back, your friends. you want to not be so alone. but wanting is dangerous, and people like you have no business in getting what they want, not with hands so red from blood)_

you’re six, almost seven, and you’re at the house of your already-declared best friend. he’s got chocolate spread smeared all round his face, and he tilts the jar towards you, grins. _you want some?_ and you _do_ , you _always_ want chocolate spread, but right before you left you dad put a hand on your shoulder and said, _remember your manners, eh, kiddo?_ so you shake your head, because you’re good at being polite, and being polite means you don’t ask for things when you go to other people’s houses. your best friend frowns, and then his whole face gets very serious. _you know what my mom always says? she says it’s okay to want things as long as you say please, ‘cause then it can’t be rude_

and that makes perfect sense, and scott is so smart, and he always says he never lies, so it must be true

_(please, you think, please)_

you’re eighteen and you want to be happy, you do, or at least _better_ , a little bit, even if you’re only held together with flimsy sticky tape. you want the stupid things that oyster shells claim to offer. you want to laugh so hard your ribs break, crack, fall apart. you’re eighteen, and the world is so, _so_ dark, and maybe you’re selfish, maybe you’re terrible, but you send out one last, desperate prayer, not to god, but to the moon, to the thing that caused all of this, the thing that keeps all of you going.  
_please_ , you think, and you slip the necklace over your head

**Author's Note:**

> ty for reading !!!


End file.
